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Learning Landscapes - Professional Playscape Design in Portland, OR

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Projects - Learning Landscapes - Professional Playscape Design in Portland, OR

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Learning Landscapes Design LLC 111 SE Madison St, Unit WO Portland OR 97214

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Have you ever wondered what kind of wildlife hang out in your garden?

There are sure to be birds, but are there weta in your woodpile? Do geckos lurk in your trees and bushes? Are skinks secretly sunbathing on big warm stones or in the longer grass?

Skinks and geckos can be secretive. They scuttle undercover at the first sound of footsteps.

Weta hide away in the day time too, and it's hard to see anything in the garden at night. But even if you haven't seen them, all kinds of wild creatures might still be about. There might be predators too - rats, mice and even possums that only come out of hiding once the humans have gone to bed.

So how do you discover the secret wildlife in your backyard? Well here are a few things to try.

Tracking tunnels let you capture the inky footprints of your garden wildlife. Here are some ways you can make them:

When weta, lizards, mice or even rats walk through your tunnel they leave inky footprints and every kind of animal has a different kind of footprint.

Once you've got some footprints, you'll need to work out what they belong too. There's heaps of information and pictures of footprints in this guide.

Now you're well on the way to becoming a backyard wildlife detective. But wait! Animals don't just leave their footprints behind. Sometimes they leave their poo.

Eeugh! Poo! But poo makes for very good clues. Big poo, small poo, long and skinny poo or black and shiny and full of beetle wings - poo is a clue that can tell you a lot about who pooed and what they ate beforehand.

Maybe you have predator poo! Find out what kind of predator might be threatening your wildlife. Check out the Pest Detective website for clues on poos.

Help Wildlife live the Good Life

If you'd like to help the wildlife in your backyard there are heaps of things you can do. You can encourage insects like weta, beetles and solitary native bees by building a weta house or an insect palace - a special place for them to hide-out during the day that's made up of lots of tunnels and tubes and nooks and crannies - just the way they like it.

Here are a few designs to check out:

Or check out some of these overseas designs for insect hotels.

What kind of bee-utiful bee house, beetle mansion or earwig extravaganza can you create?

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Going on a Backyard Safari - Predator Free NZ

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Have you ever wondered what kind of wildlife hang out in your garden? There are sure to be birds, but are there weta in your woodpile? Do geckos lurk in your trees and bushes? Are skinks secretly sunbathing on big warm stones or in the longer grass? Skinks and geckos can be secretive.

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Learning Landscapes - Professional Playscape Design in Portland, OR

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When I stumbled upon my first insect hotel a few years ago, I never knew that there were so many different kinds and looks. I explain the reasoning behind these intriguing insect abodes and I have collected some of my favorite images and resources below.

The idea behind the insect hotel is to offer refuge for insects. Some are designed as nesting sites while others provide space for hibernation. Some of the styles target a specific insect, for example lady bugs or butterflies. Others include a wide variety of materials and refuge, attracting a wide variety of insect types.

In learning landscapes, insect hotels offer a chance for young people to see bugs up close, understand where they live and offer a chance to increase the bug population. Kids are great at gathering materials and keeping an eye on the hotel. The hotel can house predatory insects to protect gardens and pollinating insects to help pollinate flowers and fruiting trees.

I think the main reason I enjoy them is because they are beautiful! They put natural materials on display in a way that is striking, functional and achievable on a small budget and with student help. This insect hotel is stunning it its design and materials selection.

Consider using these materials:

- Wood or logs with drilled holes 2mm - 8mm

- Bark

- Reeds

- Bamboo

- Rocks

- Tiles

- Sticks

- Pipe

- Tile

- Pine Cones

- Rope

- Moss

This website has steps on how to build your own!

1. Straw or wood: sheltered, this material will accommodate pretty lacewings, whose larvae feed on many pests: aphids, obscure mealybugs, whiteflies, thrips or eggs of acari.

2. Bamboo rods: they provide shelter for mason bee, solitary bees that pollinate the first flowers of fruit trees, already at the month of march.

3. Returned flower pots filled with hay it attracts earwigs who like pests such as aphids.

4. Wooden boards piled behind the metal plates: Where will come xylophagous insects involved in the decomposition of dead wood.

5. Pierced logs: they are very popular shelter for many very useful pollinators like bees and solitary wasps, whose larvae feed on aphids.

6. Bundles of pith rods as the bramble, rose, elderberry, provide shelter ideal for hoverflies and other Hymenoptera.

7. Bricks: they are appreciated by mason bee (solitary bees) ..

8. Small board close the one from the other and sheltered : they attract ladybugs who come to spend the winter. Their larvae consume a lot of aphids.

These 40 insect hotels were created by the local youth club and combined into this striking high rise.

The Luxe Bug Hotel by Arup Associated offers a stylish modern home to bugs

Playing off a bird house theme, I enjoy the architecture and size of this one too.

Don't feel overwhelmed. While these are some of the most instrresting and beautiful ones I found, you can always keep it simple. Check out this pallet insect hote l.

I am a sucker for graphics, so I had to include this beautiful insect hotel graphic too.

I hope you can find time and space to build an insect hotel of your own!

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Insect Hotels - Learning Landscapes - Professional Playscape Design in Portland, OR

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When I stumbled upon my first insect hotel a few years ago, I never knew that there were so many different kinds and looks. I explain the reasoning behind these intriguing insect abodes and I have collected some of my favorite images and resources below.... Read More"

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Go Gardening - Helping New Zealand Grow - Garden Inspiration, tips and advice from the expert

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Insects of all descriptions are good for your garden including ladybugs, wasps, lacewings, and bees. Providing a safe place for these good bugs to live is one way of keeping your garden healthy and balanced.

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Beneficial insects, or as I call them the "good guys", play a very important role in any organic garden, maintaining the natural balance. Beneficial insects include many wasps, ladybirds, lacewings, damselflies, hover-flies and different types of bees. Unfortunately like many organisms beneficial insects are under threat from pesticides, spreading suburbia and agriculture. Providing a secure haven in your garden allows these good guys an excuse to make your garden their permanent home. These sorts of insects seem to prefer individual tunnels to either lay eggs or hibernate in during the winter months. Remember you also need to provide a food source of flowers, shrubs and pests.

A simple beneficial insect apartment can be made out of any recycled material, including bamboo, timber, straw, stacked branches and tiles. An ideal apartment should be at least 15 cm in diameter and around 50cm high off the ground. I used some dry firewood and drilled random entrance holes around 8cm deep. I drilled these holes with a slight incline to avoid them filling with rainwater. Bamboo cut into lengths also make good tunnels. Twigs or fibrous material can be lightly packed into any spaces. The most preferred tunnel sizes seem to be 4mm or 9mm in diameter and 8 to 10mm deep. Don't ask me how they know this!!!

Even if you don't do much in the way of gardening, there should be room for at least one beneficial insect apartment in your garden. They take up hardly any space at all and are a great family project to enjoy making with the kids, not to mention a conversation starter with adult visitors!

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Beneficial insects, or as I call them the "good guys", play a very important role in any organic garden, maintaining the natural balance. Beneficial insects include many wasps, ladybirds, lacewings, damselflies, hover-flies and different types of bees. Unfortunately like many organisms beneficial insects are under threat from pesticides, spreading suburbia and agriculture.

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Have you ever wondered what kind of wildlife hang out in your garden?

There are sure to be birds, but are there weta in your woodpile? Do geckos lurk in your trees and bushes? Are skinks secretly sunbathing on big warm stones or in the longer grass?

Skinks and geckos can be secretive. They scuttle undercover at the first sound of footsteps.

Weta hide away in the day time too, and it's hard to see anything in the garden at night. But even if you haven't seen them, all kinds of wild creatures might still be about. There might be predators too - rats, mice and even possums that only come out of hiding once the humans have gone to bed.

So how do you discover the secret wildlife in your backyard? Well here are a few things to try.

Tracking tunnels let you capture the inky footprints of your garden wildlife. Here are some ways you can make them:

When weta, lizards, mice or even rats walk through your tunnel they leave inky footprints and every kind of animal has a different kind of footprint.

Once you've got some footprints, you'll need to work out what they belong too. There's heaps of information and pictures of footprints in this guide.

Now you're well on the way to becoming a backyard wildlife detective. But wait! Animals don't just leave their footprints behind. Sometimes they leave their poo.

Eeugh! Poo! But poo makes for very good clues. Big poo, small poo, long and skinny poo or black and shiny and full of beetle wings - poo is a clue that can tell you a lot about who pooed and what they ate beforehand.

Maybe you have predator poo! Find out what kind of predator might be threatening your wildlife. Check out the Pest Detective website for clues on poos.

Help Wildlife live the Good Life

If you'd like to help the wildlife in your backyard there are heaps of things you can do. You can encourage insects like weta, beetles and solitary native bees by building a weta house or an insect palace - a special place for them to hide-out during the day that's made up of lots of tunnels and tubes and nooks and crannies - just the way they like it.

Here are a few designs to check out:

Or check out some of these overseas designs for insect hotels.

What kind of bee-utiful bee house, beetle mansion or earwig extravaganza can you create?

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Going on a Backyard Safari - Predator Free NZ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Have you ever wondered what kind of wildlife hang out in your garden? There are sure to be birds, but are there weta in your woodpile? Do geckos lurk in your trees and bushes? Are skinks secretly sunbathing on big warm stones or in the longer grass? Skinks and geckos can be secretive.

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WETMAK - Wetland Monitoring and Restoration Kit - NZ Landcare Trust

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WETMAK - Wetland Monitoring and Restoration Kit - NZ Landcare Trust

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WETMAK - Wetland Monitoring and Assessment Kit - NZ Landcare Trust

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Welcome to WETMAK an online resource aimed at community groups working on wetland restoration projects in New Zealand. Are you making a difference? If the answer is yes, do you know how well you are

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Growing from seed guide for Central Otago

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Growing from seed guide for Central Otago

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By Helen Hillis

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About the environment: Conservation education resources

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About the environment: Conservation education resources

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Join in volunteering, training, teaching, activities and projects, have your say on issues, and apply for permits and funding.

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Our favorite conservation, ecology, and sustainability padlets, just in time for Earth Day 2016.

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Welcome to the Localising Food Project !

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Welcome to the Localising Food Project !

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Welcome to the Localising Food Project !

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Inspiring, empowering and educating communities towards greater local food resilience.

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Million Metres Streams Project - The Sustainable Business Network

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Million Metres Streams Project - The Sustainable Business Network

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Million Metres Streams Project - The Sustainable Business Network

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Government boost to waterway restoration thanks to NZ’s first conservation crowdfunding website | Happyzine | Because good news makes a difference

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Government boost to waterway restoration thanks to NZ’s first conservation crowdfunding website | Happyzine | Because good news makes a difference

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Native Bees…What’s the buzz? | Ecology Ngātahi

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Native Bees…What’s the buzz? | Ecology Ngātahi

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Did you know that there are 27 species of native bees in New Zealand that are found nowhere else in the world? If your answer to this question was 'no', don't worry - you are not alone! While most people are familiar with the 'honey bee' and 'bumblebees' (species that have been purposefully introduced to New Zealand to improve the pollination of crops), native bees often go unnoticed.

Most native bees in New Zealand are solitary and nest in the ground. All native bees consume pollen and nectar, and have similar life cycles. Female bees construct the nests in which their young are raised by digging blind-tunnels in the soil or using pre-existing tunnels in plant material. Each nest contains a cell in which the female bees place all the food that their larvae will need. They then deposit an egg and seal the cell to avoid contact with that part of the nest until the new bee has developed. Male bees on the other hand spend most their time feeding, mating and resting.

During the active flight season (mid-spring to early autumn), thousands of individuals nest alongside each other, forming large communities. By the end of autumn, adult bees die but the larvae overwinter until they emerge in mid-spring and the cycle repeats!

Studying native bees can be difficult as there are few ways to easily monitor them. As a result, there is much to learn about their populations, diversity and distribution throughout New Zealand. The aim of my master's project is to investigate how soil characteristics influence the distribution of solitary-ground nesting bees in the Waikato and Northland region. In order to do this, I am analysing soil samples collected from sites with native bees and sites without native bees and comparing this to the abundance and diversity of native bees. Already, my summer sampling has revealed that the most common species of native bee within those regions are Leioproctus paahaumaa and L. imitatus.

The two most frequently asked questions I've encountered whilst collecting data were: "do they make honey?" and "do they sting?" No, native bees do not produce honey and will very rarely sting humans. So, why should we care about them? Native bees are key pollinators of New Zealand's native flora. They are known to pollinate a wide range of plants including mānuka, kānuka and pohutukawa.

Also, surprisingly Leioproctus bees can open a mistletoe flower ( Peraxilla tetrapetala) by biting the tip of the bud. The main pollinators of mistletoe are bellbirds and tūī, but since introduced pests have significantly reduced bird numbers, native bees have partially replaced them as pollinators ( Robertson et al., 2005).
Get involved
To find out more about native bees join this Facebook group. This page is dedicated to NZ native bees - what they look like, where they live, what they do and how we can support them.

Anna Kokeny is a MSc student in the Centre of Biodiversity and Biosecurity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. She is interested in the distribution of native solitary ground nesting bees in the Waikato and Northland regions. She is supervised by Jacqueline Beggs, Jamie Stavert, Anne Gaskett and David Pattermore ( Plant and Food Research).

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Did you know that there are 27 species of native bees in New Zealand that are found nowhere else in the world? If your answer to this question was 'no', don't worry - you are not alone! While most ...

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Creating a lizard friendly garden | Forest and Bird

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Creating a lizard friendly garden | Forest and Bird

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"royal forest and bird protection society of new zealand"

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We have over 85 different species of lizards living in New Zealand and new ones are being found every few years! Once, lizards had lots of places to live but roads, buildings, farms and freshly mown

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Attack of the Karearea! | Kiwi Conservation Club

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Attack of the Karearea! | Kiwi Conservation Club

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How to encourage native birds in your garden and responsible bird feeding in your back yard

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"royal forest and bird protection society of new zealand"

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Create a wetland in your backyard, and you’ll quickly become popular with your feathered friends: Protecting, restoring or even creating a wetland can involve quite a lot of work initially, but

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This Is Your Brain on Nature -- National Geographic Magazine

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This Is Your Brain on Nature -- National Geographic Magazine

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National Geographic stories take you on a journey that's always enlightening, often surprising, and unfailingly fascinating. This month-The Power of Parks: a yearlong celebration of our common ground.

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Food Forests or Forest Gardens - Google Slides

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Food Forests or Forest Gardens - Google Slides

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link to KCC website with ideas for bird cafes :)